Frustrated immigrants march out of Hungary

1of4Immigrants leave Budapest, Hungary, heading for Germany. Over 150,000 people seeking to enter Europe have reached Hungary this year, most coming through the southern border with Serbia.Photo: Frank Augstein /Associated Press

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A refugee child coming from Turkeyrests after arriving on the shores of the Greek island Lesbos aboard an inflatable boat, on September 4, 2015. More than 230,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Greece by sea this year, a huge rise from 17,500 in the same period in 2014, deputy shipping minister Nikos Zois said on September 3. AFP PHOTO / ANGELOS TZORTZINISANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/Getty ImagesPhoto: ANGELOS TZORTZINIS, Stringer / AFP / Getty Images

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Hundreds of migrants walk after leaving the transit zone of the Budapest main train station, on September 4, 2015 intenting on walking to the Austrian border. They were part of an estimated 2,000 migrants stuck in makeshift refugee camps at Keleti station, after railway authorities had blocked them from boarding trains to Austria and Germany.
AFP PHOTO / FERENC ISZAFERENC ISZA/AFP/Getty ImagesPhoto: FERENC ISZA, Stringer / AFP / Getty Images

4of4An amputee walks among a large group of immigrants, many from Syria, along a six-lane highway outside Budapest.Photo: Mauricio Lima /New York Times

LONDON — Haggard and defiant, a large number of immigrants marched from the Keleti train station in Budapest, Hungary, toward Germany on Friday, pledging to walk 300 miles rather than remain in a country where they are not welcome.

“This is going to go down in history,” said Rami Hassoun, an Egyptian who was helping corral the crowds on a six-lane highway, where the immigrants were being watched by police.

The police put the number of immigrants who were walking at 500, but photographs from the scene and eyewitness accounts suggested that the figure was at least twice that.

Later, after marching for hours, hundreds of the immigrants boarded buses provided by Hungary’s government as Austria said early today that it and Germany would let them in.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann announced the decision after speaking with Angela Merkel, his German counterpart — not long after Hungary’s surprise nighttime move to provide buses for the weary travelers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

With people streaming in long lines along highways from the train station and from near an immigrant reception center outside Budapest, the buses would be used because “transportation safety can’t be put at risk,” said Janos Lazar, chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The immigrants’ determination to flee Hungary reflected the divisions in Europe over how to respond to the immigration crisis: British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has been reluctant to admit more immigrants, said Friday that his country would take in thousands more Syrians. Orban said immigrants could turn Europeans into a minority on the continent, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Europe was responsible for every immigrant death.

Scheduled meetings among European leaders about the influx of immigrants offered little comfort to the ones in Hungary, who hope to make it to Germany but find themselves stuck in a country that has made clear that they are not welcome.

Subhi, a 17-year-old from Damascus, Syria, was among those heading to Germany on foot, though he walks with a limp. “I’m fed up,” he said. “I’m going to walk all the way to Germany to get treatment.”

Imad Sbeih, a 50-year-old man in a wheelchair who is also from Damascus, was equally determined. “Nothing but death will stop us,” he said.

The police said they had detained over 3,000 people crossing the border illegally and 11 suspected of people smuggling. Thousands of Hungarian soldiers are in the process of building a fence on the Serbian border intended to keep immigrants out.